Travel Tips

Travelling makes my dreams come true …. but somehow I think that I might have an issue with my travel karma …

… after having flown in from Germany to spend a weekend with my best friend and her fiancé in Brighton where we celebrated her 30th birthday I had planned to visit friends in Guildford. Guildford is about 1.5 hours by train and therefore in really easy reach. While living in Brighton I had taken the train many times and knew my way around. Hop on the train in B’ton station, change at Gatwick airport for a train in direction of Reading, simply get off at Guildford station and grab a cab.

Having this in mind I did hop on the train in B’ton and reached Gatwick airport within 30 minutes. This is when the odysee began … It was a Sunday in October and it was quite busy so it took me a couple of minutes to get upstairs to check what platform the next train would be leaving from. Couldn’t find it so I thought … well it’s Sunday and I might have just missed one train. No probs … I was in a great mood, there was no rush as my friends were going to come home late in the eve anyhow and no one would be waiting for me – except the cat maybe - and there are loads of shops around at the airport. Thanks to the shops and Rob who was entertaining me on my MP3 player I actually enjoyed hanging out at Gatwick airport.

Some time later I went back to the trains and surprise, surprise, there was still no train for Reading on the screens. Well, now that was strange so I thought I’d quickly ask at information desk. A very nice lady told me that they were very sorry but there were working on the tracks and there would be no train but a bus service running. She told me to stick around and listen to the announcements. Of course she was very sorry for the inconvenience caused (Brits always apologize for any inconvenience caused – I love that – Germans never do that which is rude after all).

Following the instructions I did stick around and only a couple of minutes later a tiny elderly lady arrived at the information desk. She was dragging the hugest suitcase ever and looked totally freaked out. Gesturing wildly it was an easy guess that she didn’t understand a word. I don’t know somehow the way she looked and the way she was gesturing I knew she was French.
Just couldn’t stand watching that scene any longer, so being the good girl that I am, I went to the counter and offered my help addressing her in French. Good God, she was nearly kissing me and told me in loads of extremely quickly spoken words that she needed to go to Guildford and that her son was waiting for her and that she couldn’t reach him cause she didn’t know how to use the mobile phone her son had sent from the UK a couple of months ago. I managed to calm her down easily by telling her that I was going to go to Guildford as well and that she just needed to follow me.

At the time I had no idea what was laying ahead ….

The nice information desk lady told us to gather up and to follow her to the bus. I smiled at the little French lady and off we went. After a few meters I realized that it was not the little French lady dragging the gigantic suitcase, it was actually the suitcase pushing her forwards … Honestly, I don’t tend to travel light but I have never ever seen such an enormous suitcase … Well, what can I say, I asked her if she needed help with the suitcase and from that moment on I had not only a constantly chatting little French lady to look after but also the “trunk”. We walked for ages and when we finally reached the bus I didn’t care what it looked like I just wanted my little French lady to sit down, get rid off the “trunk” and get my MP3 earplugs back into my ears.

You wish …. They must have been to the bus graveyard to find that bus they put us on … there was no space for the “trunk” so we had to give “him” an entire seat. Which meant that I had to have my luggage on my lap (again, I do not tend to travel light …) and the blabbering French lady beside me.
I didn’t want to live up to the cliché that all Germans are rude so I didn’t switch on my MP3 player but listened to the little French lady instead, I even made her call her son with my mobile so he wasn’t panicking. At least she approved my French language skills and I still – up to this date – am proud that I understood most of what she was talking about. I also learned that only French wine from Provence is good wine. This was when I realized what was in the “trunk” that I had been dragging around sweating my butt off …. – wine from Provence, Cotes du Rhone to be precise. NO WAY, it was easing my pain when dragging the crappy “trunk” around to think that even elderly ladies do bring loads of clothes and shoes – things women need – but all the sweat for a couple of - or rather - many bottles of wine that surely is good but that you can buy anywhere in the world? You gotta be kiddin me … My already diminished great mood sort of vanished but I didn’t allow the “Germans are rude cliché” to come true that day …

The chitchatting did keep my mind off everything that was going on around. It took about 1 hour when I realized that we were on the bus for 1 hour and still hadn’t reached Guildford. Strange …. Other passengers had realized it by then as well and one guy went up to the lady driver (sorry, but she was a disaster) and asked her where actually she was planning on taking us. She changed her facial colour from white to red to white and told him, that she had no clue how to get to Guildford. Apparently she was totally lost … At that stage I was screaming inside my head living up to the “Germans are rude cliché” to the fullest. But I kept smiling and even said, “what a funny trip today!”
Isn’t it amazing what you can do if you just force yourself to make a good impression?

Thank God the guy knew his way around and guided her back on track. This is it I thought, will be there shortly. …. Wrong …. She took us to a small station in the middle of nowhere and we were told that we had to take the train from there to reach our final destination …. Guildford – usually about half an hour by train from Gatwick airport – again disappeared in my mind and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever make it there. I already saw my friends looking for me all over the place being anxious about what might have happened to me …
Nothing happened …. Exactly NOTHING …. No f… train showed up at that tiny platform in the middle of nowhere. At least the little French lady got quiet … guess she was tired and sat on the stupid “trunk” that I had dragged from the stupid bus with the stupid lady driver to the stupid platform at the stupid place in the middle of nowhere. NO MORE BEING THE NICE GIRL! I was annoyed, really annoyed so were my fellow passengers. That was the first time ever I saw a very distinguished looking British businessman in a grey suit being rude to a guy from ThamesLink who surely wasn’t the one to blame in the end. YES, not only the Germans are rude … satisfaction after all …

About 30 minutes later a train showed up and finally took us to Guildford – THANK YOU UNIVERSE! Never before have I been that happy arriving at Guildford station.

I wasn’t done yet though … have you ever been to Guildford station? – it’s quite a way from the platforms to the exits and I still had the “trunk” and the little French lady clinging to me closely. Certainly I did drag the “trunk” to the exit and handed it to little French ladies son wishing him a wonderful time with Mum and the Cotes du Rhone. I waved them goodbye and went straight into WHSmith at the station – not to buy a book or magazine, I decided at a very early stage during that crazy road trip to reward myself with a big tuna mayonnaise sandwich, a big mango smoothie and a very big chocolate bar. Said and done …

Things went smoothly from that moment on. Amazingly enough, chocolate sometimes helps brighten up your mood with in nanoseconds.
The cab driver asked me where I was from and after telling him that I was German he promised that he couldn’t hear the slightest German accent. Who cares that Brits probably wouldn’t be rude enough to tell anyhow – he helped what the chocolate had started and when I arrived at my friends’ house I was back to the great mood. Exhausted but in a great mood.

Even that I couldn’t find the hidden keys in the garden without Martina guiding me through the garden via mobile phone while she was checking in for her flight to Heathrow didn’t bother me. Must have looked slightly strange to the neighbours I guess but no one called the cops and I finally managed to get in. The cat came flying towards me longing for company. Just dropped my bags into “my” room, went to the couch, zapped through the 1000000 TV channels they have, ate the tuna sandwich, had the mango smoothie and finished the chocolate. 10 minutes later I was asleep on the couch with the cat on my lap and woke up when the lights of Martina’s car entered the drive-way. And I happily live ever after ….